Went out for a ride last night (bloody hot!) stopped a couple of times, bike fired up again no problem. I get home, park the bike on the drive, go in the house for a drink, come out, press start button (the suspense is killing you :smile no start. Lazy battery symptoms, slow starter motor noises. I swapped the battery over (both batteries a fairly new) exactly the same symptoms. At this point a dark depression hits me as I begin to think it could be the starter motor and that sodding casing is coming off again! Anywho - I leave the bike for 1/2hr or so and try again. Bike starts....But my charging monitor is red, I check the volts across the battery and I'm ~13.4V. I have left the battery on a monitor/trickle charger over night, just tested the bike, starts fine, green light on monitor and 14.2V agross battery. Sooooooooooooo, is the rec/reg on the way out, do they start to fail in the heat. Cheers.
Were both batteries recently fully charged before you swapped them? You said the spare one was fairly new but do you know what its charge state was? Sounds like rectifier to me but in future, could you please stick to making threads about motorbikes. Thanks!
Second battery had been sat about for a bit TBH. Paenitet - ego adhærebunt fila subtilia et vinis circa virtutem ventum ..
My O-level Latin is rusty and I'm meant to be working ... but did you just hit on me? :biggrin: I guess you will have to wait and see whether the second battery discharges like the first one did - if so, the rectifier is your likely culprit
Obvious thing just occurred to me - your '-ve' battery lead is in good shape, right? If you cannot see red or amber lights though ... what do you do at traffic lights? :wink:
Yup - in good shape, but will be checking all connections today. Something may have got dislodged due to the dumb bitch mondeo incident! Traffic lights are for girls...:tongue:
Nelson them battery charge monitors are very accurate if it was green during your ride I would be looking at connections due to the crash not the rectifier. Steve
You can get similar symptoms if you've got a dead cell in the battery. The voltage will go up on your charge monitor because the internal resistance of the battery has increased, but that doesn't mean the battery is actually taking charge, or that it will produce lots of amps when you need it to crank over the starter-motor. Check each cell individually with a hydrometer, if you have one, or get an auto-electrician to test it with a capacity tester.
Seems to be ok today. But, I'll take to my local batt shop were I bought it and get them to load test it. Cheers
Probably worth checking the raw output from the alternater and the output from the reg/rect too, once you've proved the battery is OK, and it's always wise to check that all the connections are clean too... Could be a comination of things...
